1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to certain new and useful improvements in balancing and tuning of percussion instruments and, more particularly, to the balancing or tuning of a percussion instrument in the nature of a drum which effectively constitutes “one-touch” tuning for a drum.
2. Brief Description of Related Art
The present invention relates largely to percussion instruments and, particularly, to percussion instruments in the nature of drums. In a conventional drum, a drum head or so-called “skin” is placed over at least one or both of the open ends of a drum body or so-called “drum shell”. In some cases, skins are placed over both open opposite ends of the drum body. Each skin is conventionally secured to the drum through a so-called “flesh hoop”. The skin forming the drum head is retained by the flesh hoop which is in an upwardly opening U-shaped channel, by means of an adhesive, such as a polyester resin and, more particularly, an epoxy resin.
The flesh hoop is retained around the periphery of an open end of the drum by means of a so-called “drum hoop”. In this way, a sound chamber is formed within the shell of the drum when the skin is extended over the open end of that drum shell such that when the hoop is struck, the reverberations through the shell cause the generation of a drum sound. If a pair of skins are used, each is effectively retained in the same manner.
There have also been drums used by early American tribal Indians in which a pair of drum heads are placed over both opposite ends of the drum. Each skin forming a drum head was retained by tying the two drum heads together over the open opposite ends of the drum body. Usually, a cord was secured to the peripheral edge of each of the skins and placed under tension so that the skins were moderately taut over each of the open ends of the drum.
In the case of the drums which use bolts and lugs mounted on the shell of the drum, tension to the hoop was applied by adjusting each of the bolts individually. In this way, the drummer could tune the drum and obtain the sound which was desired by the drummer. It can be realized that with a greater number of bolts, a more even tuning could be obtained. However, in this case, the drummer was required to adjust each of the bolts.
It can also be appreciated that when a drummer attempts to tighten the tension on one portion of a drum skin, the drummer necessarily affects all other portions of the drum skin. Consequently, even after a drummer adjusted a group of the bolts and, thereafter, adjusted all of the bolts, it may even be necessary to again readjust certain of the bolts because the tightening of each individual bolt affected the entire head. Moreover, adjustment could only be accomplished by listening carefully to the sound generated when the drum head was contacted by a drum stick.
It can also be appreciated that over a period of time, if cords are used with the tensioning elements, the cord or cable which holds the drum head to the lugs on the sidewall of the drum body would tend to stretch. Even when stretching occurred in very small amounts, that necessarily effected the sound obtained by the drum. Notwithstanding the foregoing, with constant contact of a drum stick on the drum head, stretching would result and the actual contact of the drum stick on several occasions would cause an unbalancing of the tension on the drum head.
It is also known that changes in temperature and even humidity, as well as other environmental factors will also cause drum heads to either contract or expand, depending upon the material of construction. The same holds true to the cords which hold the drum head to the sidewall of the drum body.
Due to the difficulties in tuning a drum head arising out of the fact that the drummer must adjust each portion of the drum head where it is attached to the drum, the actual tuning becomes a very time consuming and laborious task. The task becomes more arduous when the drummer must tune by listening to the sounds generated therefrom and if other sounds are generated in the surrounding ambient environment, the drummer cannot properly tune the drum. As a result, most percussionists do not properly tune the drum, if at all, and on those occasions when they do attempt to tune the drum, it frequently is not tuned properly.
There have been a few attempts to provide so-called “one touch” tuning for drums in the past. These attempts rely upon some system to attempt to obtain tonal quality of the drum head which is the same at all points along the drum head. However, in practice one touch tuning ended up as a goal as opposed to any realistic means for providing tuning of a drum with a single touch or a single adjustment.
There is still a need for some means to provide both the balancing of a drum head to ensure constant tensions on all portions of that head and a need for one touch tuning, that is tuning with a single adjustment. Heretofore, all such efforts to achieve this result have been defied.